The man who ran the largest vinyl counterfeiting operation in UK history has been sentenced to more than three years in prison, according to reports in the British press.
A London court sentenced Rehan Ahmed to three years and six months imprisonment after British intellectual property police raided his warehouse and uncovered his bootlegging operation as well as a massive stash of fraudulent LPs of some of the most popular artists in the world, including Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Kanye West, Bad Bunny, The Beatles, Ed Sheeran and many others, The Guardian and the BBC reported. In the raid, which went down in 2024, police discovered 15,000 fake vinyl that accounted for 108 artists.
Ahmed, taking advantage of a surge in worldwide vinyl sales, started his forgery scheme in 2017 and received a cease and desist that year, but that didn’t stop him, according to The Guardian. Doing business under the names Phoenix of Vinyl and Paragon Music, Ahmed made nearly $3.6 million selling his knockoffs to record shops and through online outlets. After the takedown of his warehouse, British authorities charged Ahmed with two counts of breach of copyright and acquiring and using criminal property, to which he eventually pleaded guilty.
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Peter Ratcliffe, director of content protection at the British Phonographic Institute, a music business group, told the BBC, “With music on physical formats enjoying a resurgence, the market in counterfeit records has unfortunately also been growing as criminals cash in at the expense of creators and fans,” adding, “This doesn’t just impact the legal music economy and everyone that works and invests in it — it also affects every one of us as citizens who fall victim to other forms of criminality that it funds.”
